Lets just pretend for a second that your younger brother decided to spill a bottle of water all over the top and inside your table saw. Then he decided not to say anything to you and you noticed it five days later. When you asked him about it he said he didn’t wipe any of the water up because most of it went down inside the saw and he just figured it would dry out. Besides the obvious rust that you need to clean, what other concerns would there be? If anyone has a good product or method to clean all the rust off the top of my saw I am all ears. And yes I almost lost it when he set a bottle of water on my saw the next time we were outside working.

Make sure the guts are dry….check for rust and hit it with a wire brush if there is any. I like to treat the top with a light coat of Boeshield T-9, dry and buff, then apply a coat or two of paste wax on top of that.

-- Happiness is like wetting your pants...everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth....

I’ve always used TopSaver when I had to remove any rust on the cast iron of my machines then TopCote to seal it. Both have worked well over the years.

You can hit the internal parts with WD-40, it displaces the water as well as lubricates. Work any moving parts and should remove any light surface rust.

If parts really became rusted you can use Evapo Rust. Works best if you soak the part in it but you can spray it on but you have to keep it wet or wrap it with a rag soaked with it. This really works, when restoring old iron I’ve used it on items that were goners and it cleaned them up good as new.

Yes, had that happen before as well, Clean the inside of saw, move the tild and height up all the way and make sure they are all free and clear and wd40 all of it, look at your pullys and belts, of course do not wd40 them. Check it every so often…. The top like suggested, I bought a older pm 7hp shaper which was neglected real bad and for the top I had to get real agressive with it and used 300grit all the way up to 5,000 grit and used a 6in os on it and it came out looking just like new then polished and waxed after I was done.

I once had a really bad roof leak that ended up landing squarely on the table saw. Lots of green scrubby pads and WD-40 later, it was much better. Oiled it, let it sit for a couple of days, then rubbed it down hard and waxed it. You can’t tell now, it’s been several years. But it was OK.